Created on Friday, 12 April 2013
Written by MITCH STACY,Associated Press

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Central Ohio is being transformed into the Land of Lincoln this weekend.

About three dozen Abraham Lincoln impersonators from around the U.S. are convening in Columbus for their 19th annual convention to compare notes and costumes and tour some Abe-related historical sites.

The get-together of the Association of Lincoln Presenters also will feature various versions of the 16th president's wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, and other Civil War-era re-enactors.

On Friday morning, one of them, Jerry Payn (payn), will stand before his fellow Lincolns at the Ohio Statehouse and deliver the same speech the president gave there in 1861.

Later they'll all gather for a local high school production of "Our American Cousin," the play Lincoln was watching when he was assassinated in April 1865.